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Elections Countdown
Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2005-06
Monday February 7th - Sunday February 13th 2005

THE country's forthcoming general election continued to generate considerable interest in the media, which devoted 175 stories to the issue. A total of 108 reports appeared in the government media and the remaining 67 in the private media. However, the official media's coverage of the issue remained disproportionately pro-ZANU PF. For example, out of the 108 stories the government media carried on electoral and politically related issues, 74 of them (69%) passively trumpeted the campaign activities of ZANU PF while the opposition MDC was only covered in six (6%) stories. The rest of the stories dealt with other election related issues, including administrative ones. Notably, these media ignored the campaign activities of other opposition parties. Moreover, the six stories that the government media carried on the MDC were mainly used to project a bad image of the party such as the in-house fighting that rocked the party in Masvingo recently.

The Herald (7/2), for example, even lied that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai -campaigning for his party in Masvingo - was out of the country to meet his "backers" instead of campaigning at home. The paper (8/2) did not even retract its apparent falsehood despite running an MDC denial story, which it buried in its news Briefs column. Conversely, the government media adopted a slavishly pro-ZANU PF stance in reporting ruling party matters as exemplified by ZBH. The government broadcaster devoted 22 of the 45 reports it carried on the campaign activities of ZANU PF to report glowingly on the launch of the party's poll campaign. Its partisan presentation of electoral and politically related issues in the country was also reflected in its sourcing pattern as indicated in the table.

Voice distribution on ZBH

Notably, President Mugabe alone was cited 16 times out of the 67 ZANU PF voices sourced, courtesy of his over-publicized speech during his party's campaign launch. Besides, half of the alternative voices quoted were ZANU PF apologists, such as William Nhara and MacDonald Charumbira.

The opposition was ruthlessly exiled from the public eye, with MDC's Welshman Ncube being the only official to get airtime (20 seconds) on ZTV

(10/2, 8pm) denouncing political violence. His views however, among others, were reported in the context of lending credence to President Mugabe and ZANU PF's calls for the need to hold peaceful elections. The private media appeared to have reasonably balanced coverage of the activities of the country's main political parties by devoting 13 stories to ZANU PF and nine to the MDC. Notably, The Daily Mirror stable published six of the 13 stories on the ruling party's campaign activities. However, the private media also did not publicize much of the smaller opposition parties' activities. They only carried two reports on the electoral concerns of the United Parties and the independent candidate for Harare Central, Margaret Dongo.

None of the stories by the official media scrutinized the country's electoral framework. The five reports they carried on administrative electoral issues were mere official announcements that included the declaration of the polling day of March 31st as a public holiday and government's intention to gazette rules regulating political parties' access to ZBH. Moreover, they ignored the huge increase in the registration fees for candidates from $100,000 to $2 million per contestant and the equally steep increase in the amount charged for securing the voters' roll from $200,000 to $5 million.

Critical analysis on the impact of the new fees structure was only made in the private media, which carried nine stories on the subject. Studio 7 and SW Radio Africa (7/2), for example, quoted officials from the MDC and the newly formed Zimbabwe Youth Alliance arguing that the new fees would severely restrict the participation of opposition parties with little financial resources in the election. The government media provided greater publicity (15 stories) to calls by the authorities and civic society on the need for peaceful elections, but ZBH underreported cases of politically motivated violence in the country as shown in Fig 2.

Fig 2 Electronic media's coverage of politically motivated violence and harassment

Nearly all those reported as being responsible for the violence or harassment were recorded as either ZANU PF members or State security agents, while the victims were almost always identified as perceived MDC supporters. Only in two cases were MDC activists identified as the perpetrators. In one of the cases, reported by SW radio Africa (10/2) and Studio 7 (12/2), faction fighting broke out in the MDC over the selection of a party candidate to represent the opposition party in Masvingo Central, while the other report, broadcast by ZTV (7/2, 8pm), accused the MDC of assaulting ZANU PF activists in Johannesburg, South Africa. The report, sourced only from ZANU PF, was however dismissed as an "absolutely ...malicious allegation" by the MDC's SA representative, Jabulani Mkwananzi, on Studio 7 (7/2).

Similarly, the government newspapers reported two incidents of violence recorded during the MDC's intra-party fighting in Masvingo as well as in Norton where ZANU PF activists allegedly beat up members of the public, suspected MDC supporters and the police. The two stories also appeared in the private media. Otherwise, private newspapers carried five more separate reports, all of which accused ZANU PF activists of instigating violence mainly against MDC supporters. Among the reports was the Zimbabwe Independent (11/2) round-up story, Violence hots up, which recorded four incidents of politically motivated violence and persecution of MDC MPs.

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